Drum Groove Plug-in

How to get there

  1. Choose the Selection tool icon and select a region of the document.
  2. Choose Plug-ins > Scoring and Arranging > Drum Groove.

What it does

The Drum Groove plug-in allows you to add a percussion part to the document containing one of many available rhythms, or “Drum Grooves”. These drum grooves include percussion notation along with a corresponding percussion layout.

Noteman says: The Drum Groove folder is located in the MakeMusic/Finale/Plug-ins folder (not the Component Files folder as indicated in the static text of the dialog box–see Finale Installation Details for the full path on your system).

  • Style. From this list, choose the drum groove style you would like to add to the document. The drum groove you choose should correspond to the tempo and time signature of the piece. For example, Jazz Waltz should be applied section of music in triple meter. If the region selected in the document exceeds the duration of the drum groove, the drum groove will repeat until the end of the selected region. Each style in this list corresponds to a MIDI file in the Finale/Component Files/Drum Groove folder. As noted in the dialog box, you can add supplement this list by adding any MIDI file with a percussion track (on channel 10) to the Drum Groove folder. The MIDI file’s name appears in this list. Then, when the new style is chosen, Finale uses the MIDI data on channel 10 as the drum groove.

    The Drum Groove plug-in does not read MIDI data on any channel other than channel 10. If a MIDI file contains percussion notation in a channel other than 10, open the file in Finale (or another program that supports MIDI editing) and change the staff (or track) containing the percussion notation to channel 10.

  • New Staff at Bottom of Score • Existing Staff. Choose New Staff at Bottom of Score to add the drum groove into a new percussion staff added automatically to the bottom of the score. Choose Existing Staff, and then select a staff from the pop-up menu to add the drum groove into any existing staff.
  • Generate: Notation with Percussion Layout • Normal Notation • Slashes. Choose Notation with Percussion Layout to add drum notation in addition to a percussion layout which assigns each percussion instrument to a specific notehead and staff line or space. See Percussion for more information. Choose Normal Notation to add the drum groove as normal notation. If you choose this option, notation appears on the staff based on MIDI Note numbers. Choose Slashes to display the drum groove as slash notation in the document. If you choose Slashes, the entire staff containing the drum groove will use the Slash Notation staff attribute. See Alternate Notation dialog box. To apply slash notation (or normal notation) to a portion of a staff, use Staff Styles.
  • OK • Cancel. Click OK to add the drum groove to the document based on the setting chosen. Click cancel to dismiss the dialog box without adding a drum groove.